


Ice, Ice Baby

by Yuu_no_hu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Cigarettes, Cold, Darcy you shouldn't befriend hobos, F/M, Hobo Steve, M/M, More Character and Relationship Tags to be added later, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, PTSD, Probably ooc, Rating will go up, Shotgunning, Smoking, hopefully not as depressing as it sounds, no really, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_no_hu/pseuds/Yuu_no_hu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembered waking up, freezing and disoriented and surrounded by strangers in white coats. Panicking because everything felt wrong and it didn’t make any sense and he was supposed to have been dead. </p>
<p>He didn’t know why he was still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro

It was cold out, but winter in New York had always been cold and it was a familiar, almost comforting sensation to watch his breath puff out in wisps and curls of fog in the icy air. His jacket was old and made with brown leather, lined with thick fleece and still not enough to protect him fully from the mid-November chill. He’d gotten a lot better at ignoring it over the years, too many snowy expeditions where he hadn’t been afforded the luxury of acknowledging how cold it was except to try and factor it into the plan.

The thin streets of the New York he’d come back to were almost unrecognizable, filled with hot car exhaust and the many, many buildings that had popped up over the years, they almost managed to block the bone chilling wind if you could find the right angle of a wall to hide behind.   
He could almost trick himself into thinking that it was warmer out than it had been the last time he’d spent a winter there. Even though; back then, he’d had a place to go back to when his fingers were numb with cold, when the chill finally made it’s way through his chest and threatened to freeze his lungs in place.

It didn’t make him wheeze like it used to. 

That had been such a long time ago.

~

His head tipped back, staring at the slate grey skies and watching the smoke from his lungs reach up towards that flat, blank plane, it reminded him of the cigarettes he’d used to smoke, a habit he’d broken a long, long time ago. Before the plane crash, hell; before the train.

He’d thought about starting up again now that he had so much time on his hands and too many memories in his head, if only for the blissful numbness that the nicotine would blanket him in; but it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t do nearly enough. He knew that it would only remind him of long evenings spent pulling smoke from slim white sticks, one burning cigarette shared between two sets of breath, lips meeting and mouths panting as they tried not to waste any of the nicotine that clouded above them, the smoke gathering at the ceiling before it slowly dissipated a few hours later, his trembling lungs trying to keep up with the other’s hard breaths.

It had been a shoddy pretense for what they were really doing.

Dark eyes wide with lust and desperation as they met fogged blue through the thin haze of smoke between them, pulling his slight body to straddle strong thighs and let him scrape needy fingers across tanned biceps and broad shoulders, ensnaring them both in a web of half-truths and lies and what no one would ever dare to label as love. 

Something they couldn’t ever afford to label as love.

They’d known that it was.

It didn’t matter anymore. 

~

His hands fit snugly into the fleece lined pockets of his jacket, absently fingering the dog tags he didn’t let himself wear anymore; the ones that had someone else’s name on them. He couldn’t afford to be any sort of noticeable, even if it meant keeping the cold metal in his pocket along with the old, water damaged compass he’d managed to salvage from the pieces of wreckage.  
He wondered sometimes if he should have kept any of it, the keepsakes, the reminders that although he’d won -they’d won- he had still managed to lose everything he cared about.

~

He remembered waking up, freezing and disoriented and surrounded by strangers in white coats. Panicking because everything felt wrong and it didn’t make any sense and _he was supposed to have been dead_. 

He didn’t know why he was still alive. 

It had taken him a week to fully grasp what had happened, to wonder if he should be cursing or thanking the serum in his veins.

The ice that had kept him intact. 

~

He was never given the names of the people who had fished him out of the ocean so many years too late, nor the ones of who they worked for. All they cared to do was to find out why he was still breathing. 

He didn’t know if they’d known who he was, but he’d left as soon as he could bring himself to, as soon as he could stop the panic from taking over whenever he remembered everything. His training and cautiousness keeping his escape unnoticed by whatever sort of security the facility had.

He’d grabbed a few things on his way out; clothes, a pack, the tags, the compass, his shield. The only things they’d had that could ever identify him. Although whether that ‘him’ was Steve Rogers or Captain America, he couldn’t say.  
He’d _needed_ to bring them along with him. Not because he didn’t want anyone to know that he was alive, he... He didn’t know if he cared what anyone knew.   
He’d done it because he couldn’t bring himself to leave them behind.   
No matter how dumb he'd felt for doing it.

~

He nudged the backpack with his foot, just to remind himself that it was there, his worn combat boots smearing more dust across the thick black fabric. He could feel the hard metal inside of it, padded by the clothes and supplies and trinkets that were folded around it.  
He’d been living out of the backpack for over a year now and he was far less worried for his safety on the streets than he should have been, too. Cynical and too frank with himself to be anything other than certain that he could handle himself.

He just wanted to be left alone; not entirely, not forever, he just needed a break from the memories.  
A break from the stammer that threatened to enter his voice when he talked to people.

He’d thought about going someplace other than where he was now, roaming the streets of New York; lingering in parks and busy street corners, pawning his sketches for spare change.

He’d wondered whether or not he could go back to the military, or if he’d be turned away; as he had been so many times before Erskine.  
He didn’t know if he’d be able to stand it.  
It had been all he'd wanted to do with his life when he had been younger, but he wasn't quite as sure anymore.

~

He closed his eyes, letting the familiar cold sink into his bones and absently wondering whether he’d ever be warm again, or if the ice had simply pulled the warmth out of him, leaving nothing behind but a ragged, ice cold shell.


	2. Hello Brooklyn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy's not entirely sure why Erik moved them all to New York but if she keeps running into guys as hot as the one behind her in the checkout line, it might just be worth the trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually had this chapter written for a really long time, sorry >.>

“You look like a marshmallow.”  
Darcy turned to look at her friend, tugging the wide, blue and grey scarf off of her face so she could talk “aw, thanks Jane.” She said with a crooked smile, trying to brush curly strands out of her face and wondering how it was that she’d only actually put on her hat a minute ago and she was already getting wisps.  
The puffy white coat she wore was already getting to be uncomfortably warm inside, but she knew that it would -probably- protect her from the flurries of snow that were gusting around the streets outside.

Jane’s eyes narrowed, eyeing her getup with curiosity “wait, where are you going?” She asked “the store” Darcy said simply, giving up on the wisps; the wind was just going to blow them back into her face as soon as she stepped out into the wind anyway.  
“Wait, you’re leaving?” Jane asked, a guarded emotion flickering across her expression as she frowned “you said you’d help me go through the New Mexico readings again tonight.”  
Darcy gazed at her for a long moment “Jane, I checked your fridge; you are completely out of milk - you don’t even have coffee! You know I can’t work on science without a sufficient coffee supply.” Her smile was bright and genuine and Jane eased back a moment later “um,” she said “okay, just... Be careful, the sidewalks are icy.” Darcy grinned at her “will do.” She said, giving a mock salute and ducking out the front door, tugging the scarf back up over her face as she trudged down the hallway to the elevator. 

~

The cold wind bit into her face, pushing her scarf _into_ her mouth, freezing her nose and icing her eyelashes together as she pulled the thick wool off of her tongue and readjusted it on her face.

She growled quietly in irritation, trying to walk and still be able to see at the same time as she pushed her way into the grocery store and out of the wind.

Once she was in, she took a long minute to One; appreciate the marvels of modern heating, and Two; blink furiously and try to get some moisture back into her eyes, because she felt like her contacts were going to stick to the insides of her eyelids -or, more realistically, she was going to blink them out by accident if they got any drier- and it was neither a pleasant thought nor feeling. 

~

She tugged off her gloves and red knit hat, stuffing them into a coat pocket and loosening her scarf again to let it hang loosely around her neck; letting out a slow sigh as she finally stepped out of the entranceway.  
 Her list was fairly short, just enough to keep Jane going for another week or so with the constant drop ins of her and Eric - not that Eric spent as much time around anymore.  
He thought that they didn’t notice, and he always had an excuse. 

Jane told her not to worry about it, but Darcy wondered what was going on with him nonetheless. 

~

Coffee, eggs, bread, cereal, milk... Poptarts. She hummed absently as she dropped the items into her basket, taking the time alone to wonder about the state of her life.

Taking an odd internship for a few credits wasn’t supposed to have lead to spacial anomalies and shady government officials and the partial destruction of an entire town.

It wasn’t actually supposed to entail uprooting and moving to New York, of all places, on a whim.

She still didn’t know how Jane had been convinced that it was a good idea, since everything with Thor had taken place in New Mexico, which was not a close town. 

But S.H.I.E.L.D was near magical and Eric had been convinced that it was a good idea, so they’d left.

Darcy wasn’t sure whether or not the move had been a good one, since uprooting Jane hadn’t managed to take the quiet desperation out of her eyes and having only Darcy and Eric for company in a city full of strangers was starting to wear on her, from what Darcy could see.

Which she totally didn’t need because Thor _still hadn’t come back yet_.

Jane had started alternating between tearing through her notes trying to make new connections and not being able to touch her equipment for days because there was  
Absolutely. Nothing. New. 

It was painful to watch, because Jane _lived_ for science and she’d been promised the answer to every question she’d ever asked and then he’d just _left_.

If she didn’t know that it would upset Jane, Darcy would be furious with him. 

~

She didn’t actually know what they’d all thought that moving would change but everything was just as dead in New York as it had been in New Mexico after Thor had left and they all had too much time on their hands 

Except for Eric, for some reason.

And all that Darcy could do was help Jane out when she asked for it, do the shopping and try not to flunk all of her classes, which she’d managed to get transferred to online since she was no longer in the state; something that may have had Shield interference because she knew that some of the classes shouldn’t have been able to be transferred but she wondered if that was too presumptuous of her, because Shield really couldn’t give two shits about her.

Maybe it was because she was friends with Jane and Jane totally had a reputation now for knowing Thor.

That would be cool, she thought. Totally cool. 

~

She smiled at the cashier as she put her basket up on the counter “Hiya” she said, smile faltering slightly as he ignored her and muttering “well, fine then. Jerk” before stepping back to watch him bag her groceries in silence instead.

She caught the quiet huff of laughter from the person in line behind her and turned to see whether he was laughing at her or the cashier’s attitude. 

Because either way, she could use the entertainment.

~

She was slowly learning that grocers in the city were much ruder than the ones she was used to. 

~

The phrase ‘oh no, he’s hot!’ came to mind as she met large grey-blue eyes, taking a moment to appreciate thick lashes and short, messy blond hair “do you need something?” She asked raising her eyebrows, still looking him up and down as she added “because I can totally help you.”  
He had freckles, she noticed, the light specks hardly noticeable across the light tan of his skin.

Her gaze dipped down to the curve of his jaw as he flustered and glanced away, turning his face to hide the subtle flush creeping across his cheeks at her words. 

She grinned.

What a cutie. 

~

She eyed the -sweet, goddamn antique looking- old bomber jacket he wore, the dirty black backpack hanging off of his shoulder and his complete lack of gloves as she swiped her card to pay. 

He shifted awkwardly for a moment, glancing up again and giving a her painfully sweet smile “Hi,” he said, disregarding her offer in favor of introducing himself “I’m Steve... Steve Rogers.” 

She stepped back, grabbing her bag of groceries and letting him put his items on the counter but didn’t leave right away, offering her free hand and replying “Darcy Lewis” instead.

His smile widened as he took her hand, his skin rough but surprisingly warm against hers.  
His hands were big, she noticed, almost making hers seem small by comparison.  
His handshake was firm but personable, if a handshake could be such a thing and she found that it made her like him more.

His gaze met hers again, eyes crinkling at the corners as he said “it’s a pleasure to meet you, Darcy Lewis.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading, it's going to get happier, I promise.   
> If you like (or don't like) than leave a comment to let me know what you think! Point out any spelling/grammatical/whatever errors, so that I can fix them, please!


End file.
